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So the news came down Friday morning — seemingly out of nowhere — that Dean Blandino was stepping down as the NFL’s VP of officiating. He will reportedly join a network as an analyst. But his departure will make for an interesting path here for the league and the officials. Blandino was just in Phoenix a couple weeks ago for the NFL owners meetings, explaining some of the rules changes at a press conference. One of the moves for this season was changing replay — not only making it so officials will view replay challenges on a tablet on the field instead of a screen on the sideline under a hood, but also so that the final decision on replay will now come from the centralized location in New York and not the on-site referree. Blandino, as VP, was supposed to be one of the few people that would be making these important decisions.

Now, Blandino — who had been pushing for such a change — is gone.

Who moves into that role will be under scrutiny. Blandino was generally considered solid at his job, although there are plenty of people who don’t like how officiating has gone (something tells me that will always be an issue, however) and there have certainly been plenty of officiating controversies the last few seasons.

Win now and don’t select a QB! Yes, Palmer might retire after this season, but he has still a contract during the 2018/2019 season… And next year QB class (Darnold, Mayfield, Rosen, Reynolds…) is so much better than Kizer, Watson, Mahomes and Trubisky!

I love your first two picks. Instant starters. However, I feel if Keim trades
down, they are absolutely going to take a chance on Mahomes. Frankly, there is no other QB in this class with his skill set and pro arm. Here is how I see it with a move down:

I would stay at #13 and draft Rueben Foster and then cb in round 2. No way should they wait and choose a cb with a comp pick or in round 7. They got torched at that #2 corner too often last season. I like Foster because he would bring a nasty streak to the defense and special teams to go along with his great skills.

I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, do the owners somehow think it’s going to make a significant difference who the guy in the booth is? That somehow, if it’s someone other than Blandino, this is going to work out badly?

I’ve never refereed a game in my life, and I’m probably about 95-plus percent at guessing correctly which way the call will go at home (based on applying the rule of “incontrovertible” evidence). I mean, most of them aren’t that hard. And the ones that ARE hard — the “was this a catch or not” where the guy may or may not have been still juggling the ball as he stepped out of bounds — half the fans are going to disagree with you no matter which way you come down.

Personally, I think it should be a panel of current or former on-field referees who look at every reviewed play and give it a vote as to whether the call should be overturned. Majority rules. That way, everything’s not so dependent on one guy’s interpretation of the rule or what his eyes are telling him. And publish the results — so we know which calls were 5-0 decisions and which ones were 3-2.

I certainly applaud your point about accountability. That is a concept that the officials never seem accountable for. They get calls wrong….we know they do. It happens every week. But then what? Sometimes those missed / erroneous calls can cost a team a game. But the refs who made them? They are right back on the field next week, moving on to the next game, and last week’s game doesn’t even exist anymore.

Head coaches….players….GM’s….team owners….they all are all made to be accountable. They all have to stand up in front of the media after every game and answer questions, make explanations, admit mistakes that were made. But the refs? Nope. Out the door and gone. They answer no questions and they give no explanations. Why should they? They don’t have to!

Plenty of discussion goes on about the mistakes THEY made. Trouble is, they are never there for it.

An entity that makes a much money as the NFL does and is as big as the NFL is should have FULL TIME refs. Period. Guys that whose FULL TIME job is to be an NFL official. And as such, they should be available after games and subject to scrutiny by the media like everyone else.

Kevin…
I think most people would agree with you but have you noticed there’s nothing in the football news worth writing about except endless mock drafts by the fantasy football contingent!
Seems like I read somewhere that the Owners were going to talk about moving the Draft up to April 1, to keep fans from getting burned out on Mock Drafts during the REALLY SLOW time between Free Agency and the draft.
Darren, do you know if this happened?

On a different note…
The news that the contracts with several teams(the majority of the teams,including the Cardinals), for charter services by a number of airlines has been cancelled, I would think is a major development as this will impact not only away games here in the US but moreover, the International gamesl Do you know if the Cardinals have/are looking into other alternatives? I would think something of this magnitude would require significant notice to the teams, and I’m sure the “fix” is going to be costly, which will impact the fans. I know some of the NBA teams have their own planes but, they also play alot more games requiring travel.
Any news about this Darren?